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sassyfrasscircus asked: In my experience the full range of Jose Cuervo effects seem to happen at a much faster rate in your life. <3

ha! it’s true. last night I think I had 4 drinks, puked, and tried calling at least 3 people. found out about the puking and phone calls after I woke up today.

but on the positive side of life, i’m a cheap drunk and my job is over! i’m done my year of service 

(via wildhorsescouldntdragmeaway)

Incense yearns to disappear in scent
Scent to cling to incense.
Melody seeks to fetter herself in rhythm,
While rhythm flows back to melody.
Idea seeks its body in form, 
Form its freedom in idea.
The infinite seeks the touch of the finite,
The finite its release in the infinite.
What drama is this between creation and destruction—
This ceaseless to and fro between idea and form?
Bondage is striving for freedom,
and freedom seeking rest in bondage. 

— Rabindranath Tagore

(via swintons)

Another livejournally post for yall.

Yesterday I had another run in with my boss. She planned a project, which I forgot about. I got to work at the normal time and no one was there. I overheard a tip about where I was supposed to be and rushed over. I was a little confused about why no one bothered to call or text me about my whereabouts, but I figured I wasn’t so needed.

Lo and behold, I get to the site, and they are building these rain garden containers with faulty directions that most people there don’t know how to build. I went to a workshop and built one myself a few months ago, so I knew how to do it. My presence ended up being super helpful.

Meanwhile, I found out a coworker of mine had offered to call me, but my boss told her not to by virtue of some sort of proving of points.

After the project, with a few misunderstandings between some folks, it came down on me that I had the punitative obligation to go fill in for a coworker at a school with a bunch of kids that take weeks to get through to. I did it, it wasn’t so bad, it was actually pretty fun. 

But I fucking hate office politics, heirarchical bullshit, downright bitchiness and passive agressiveness, and all the bullshit that comes with a boss who won’t let herself be herself and thus everyone around her, or at least myself, is made to feel uncomfortable because she doesn’t seem to want to be supportive or friendly with anyone unless it’s to get ahead. ugh ugh ugh.

Anyway, I’m thinking a lot about a quote a read today. It went something like, “The greatest privilege and journey one can have is to be yourself.” I’m thinking about how offices in general try to stifle the idea of self, through “appropriate” dress, “appropriate” and “professional” speech (aka not saying what you mean), heirarchical let-me-bow-to-thee-boss bullshit that I am so tired of, all of it. I’m so excited to NOT be doing that for an indefinite amount of time. I don’t know if I’m ready to go to law school though, in light of this. Will I need to wear a suit every day in the beginning? cause fuck that. Maybe eventually. But only suits I like. For cases I like. Or maybe I should just grow sweet potatoes garlic and nettles instead. I’d like to work on my black thumb and coordination before i do more “community service” and “saving the world”. If not before, at least during. I’m tired of not having time for anything but work, although sometimes I do it to myself.

Actually, i never do it to myself. The only time I’m working constantly is when there is a Saturday project that I am “required” to “volunteer” at. That shit upsets me on principal. But honestly, I dig everyone there except for my boss. She makes being in her presences feel like WORK. I mean, the kind of work that being in court or having to wear a pretty dress and tight shiny shoes to church kind of work. The prissy kind that just gives you a headache after an hour and makes you question the value of life based on hard to pin down frustrations. For some reason, she instills in me a similar kind of frustration and fear that my mother does. One that is, under all circumstances, constantly judging and making decisions that will directly affect you due to the judgements. One that doesn’t allow me at all to feel like or be myself.

Yesterday I went out with some friends of friends for halloween. It was fun. Today I saw some other people I liked. Being myself around most of them was still questionable, but I didn’t feel like I was keeping a tight lid on everything. That’s how working feels: like stuffing myself into a tiny canister that’s barely neat enough to pass for professional and going to work each day, coming back with a major ache in my innards like the way my foot feels shoved inside a fancy pretty shoe with a few scuffs on it.

Anyway, I wanted this post to be about how my job ends in two weeks, I’m very excited about this. It’s also why I’m up at 3:30 am

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I haven’t felt like a feminist for most of my life. The truth is, that word has always created an image in my head of a bunch of pretty, relatively privileged well dressed white girls sitting around a table and lamenting the fact that they aren’t allowed to cheat on their husbands or be the “bad bitches” they long to be. I think about this exhausting argument I got into with a popular girl in high school about The Awakening, a book that in my opinion disenfranchises women and relegates them to a class of spoiled people who feel like their only identity lies in a man, and when that is gone, nothing else is left but to go drown oneself in the ocean.

But that’s a digression. Anyway, that’s just where my mind goes when one starts talking about feminism.

Structurally, in the U.S. females hold a relative sum of power. They largely participate in heteronormative relationships and marriages and thus either have earned or are benefitting from class privilege, they have the right to vote, our government isn’t trying to target ALL women and put them in jail because they are women, they aren’t redlined and redistricted to the ghettos, etc. etc. That’s mostly cause many men are somehow tied to us, even (and perhaps especially) evil ones, who, in the end, need us to satisfy their fuck hunger.

But in interpersonal relationships and interactions, I’ve seen my whole life women become marginalized in most social settings. 

I just came back from an occupy baltimore satellite event feeling pretty marginalized because of who I am. And while everyone in the room wanted to tackle all these issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia, the conversation seemed to be dominated by males in a way that made it hard for me to communicate at all. When I did talk, if what I said was received, it was often talked down to, especially with the facilitator of the meeting. This was frustrating and just made me feel reclusive and angry enough to stay up past my bed time and write this thing out.

This whole occupy thing is pretty inspiring, at least intellectually. I am relieved that the people of the United States have surpassed my expecations of their ability to mobilize around political issues, and everyone in town that I know of has been to at least one occupy event.

Everyone I know. Should be pretty inspiring, huh?

Except that everyone I know includes someone who sexually assaulted me last summer. It also includes my ex boyfriend who was in so many ways fucked up to me, with our last interaction stemming from his accusations of witchcraft on my part and his expressed desire that I don’t try to be his friend or ever contact him again.

And these are the nice boys in the movement. The ones that let me talk and from what I’ve seen, have left their egos back somewhere else. At least for these meetings. It makes me really dislike and fear the men that can’t control themselves. Because if they feel the need to dominate in even an orginizational situation such as these meetings, how many women have they been fucked up to and in what kind of horrible ways?

Maybe that’s making too many assumptions. I’ve also realized that I have my own shit to deal with in relating and confronting these men that have intimately violated me. If anyone on the internet has any insight please let me know.

These are some questions going through my head:

- Can I (and should I) separate my view of these people’s characters and their respective actions towards me in this type of setting?

- How do I go about interacting with people who I felt have violated me in the past? How do I trust them in an organizing setting in order to help the movement go forward?

- My initial reaction has been to avoid them by avoiding participation in any of this. But, is seceding from the movement because of them self-censorship?

- How do I relate to others in a room when there is someone there who triggers feelings of disempowerment?

- How much, if any, of accountability should I assign to those that have hurt me in intimate ways and how much of it should I take on as my own burden?

- If it is just my own burden and my own shit to deal with, what can I do about it?

Another thing to note, my sexual assaulter has apologized to me. Perhaps that’s all I should expect. I don’t know what to do with that, though. I can forgive him, but it doesn’t make me feel safe or comfortable around him.

My ex boyfriend has made a few attempts to reconnect, though nothing has been explicitly said about feeling any remorse, having second thoughts about his ideas about witchcraft or whatever, or particularly wanting to accept my very old invitation of being friends. But maybe that’ll all take time and the right context.

And that’s the other issue. These occupy spaces never feel like the right time or place to confront these issues. But for me, they have been weighing heavy on me each time I am in these spaces with these people. I know I need to act, even if it’s just talking to someone about it or writing it down in this way, which is why I wrote it down. I don’t know what to do about it though. For the time being I’m going to continue to go about my life in relative reclusion from the movement.

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